Cody Sun: “Even when you make a mistake, Aphro sacrifices himself to try to save you. He’s like a “Get out of Jail”-card.”

100 Thieves have been on a hot streak, tearing through NA and in their wake, creating a fan base that grows with every game.

There have been large expectations from this roster, but many eyes are on Cody Sun to see if he can perform with the veterans of his squad.

Izento got a word with Cody Sun to talk his relationship with Aphromoo, thoughts on his public perception and his newfound confidence in his own plays.

What are your thoughts on your game against Clutch Gaming? Because many would have believed that CG got ahead early game that they could close it out.

Playing the game, we were extremely calm, everyone was just playing the game, we’re trying our best, especially when, ya know, Aphromoo, he just has a really calm demeanor when we’re playing on stage. I mean, no one on our team really thought we were that behind. We knew we were behind a little bit, but we didn’t think we were like 10k gold down. I thought we were down like 3k and it was fine since we had a late-game scaling comp and we just had to play the teamfight well. We were pretty chill in the game. We were like, “let’s just take it slow, play the teamfight well, we had some bad engages and positioning in the past”.

Well, speaking of Aphromoo, how’s your relationship going with him? Do you think you’re meshing well together and do you think it’s for the better that you’ve meshed with another support?

I think since we haven’t played with each other that much yet, in terms of first starting out. I’m trying to play more aggressively to fit him and he’s trying to get me to understand the limits of what we want to accomplish in lane or outside of lane. I think he really allows his ADCs to play much more aggressively than other supports that I’ve played with because he just wants to play to the limits of each scenario.

So it seems that he’s very open to the playstyle that you want to do?

Yeah. So when I had Olleh, if I made a mistake or if I made a positioning error, and I was a goner, that would be my fault and I totally understand that, but with Aphro, even when you make a mistake or you do something and you misstep, he’ll sacrifice himself to try to save you, so it’s kind of different. He’s like a “get out of jail-free card”. So I think the other ADCs, like Stixxay or Doublelift that played with him, had it really good. He’ll save you from your own mistakes and I didn’t really have that in the past.

You have been playing more aggressive recently, with your Ezreal pick against CLG and then with your Tristana pick against CG. Is this a change of playstyle from you?

Yeah. I think right now, playing with Aphro, he always allows the ADC to play more aggressive, and he likes that. I’m trying to mesh with him better by playing more aggressively and also pushing myself to play these risky situations better than before.

I’m in a transition period right now in terms of my playstyle. Sometimes I misstep and it backfires, but Aphro let’s me know it’s fine. I think he really understands what’s really going on.

What’s your opinion on your public perception as being a middle to lower-tier ADC. Do you think it was primarily due to your performance at Worlds and a recency bias?

I don’t care that much about it. I always watch Bjergsen and he’s always saying he doesn’t regret it or anything, and he says that any criticism he gets, his coaching staff or teammates will tell him. That’s kind of what I’m trying to do as well.

For me, I always try to improve myself everyday and not worry too much about the negative feedback, because I’ve been through so much criticism in the past, especially as a rookie coming in, everyone is memeing “Cody Done”. Honestly it was pretty bad, it affected me a lot, but I feel like I’ve been through all that and I’ve come out stronger. Even with the Worlds thing, that’s like the worst it can be (laughs). It doesn’t get any worse than that. Going through all that, I was like, “damn, I really messed up on the World stage”, but ya know, it was literally my first year making it to Worlds. That game, disregarding that play, I actually played that game decently well, looking back and reviewing it. Like I said, it was my first time playing at Worlds and I messed up. It’s chill.

Against Clutch Gaming, you guys gave up the Galio + Jarvan combo. Is it just that you guys aren’t scared of the combo at all?

As a team, we prioritize different stuff than they do. We gave them the Kalista, Galio, J4, and we just said, we can play it out, we can hold on the early game. I think we did a pretty good job until, I think I got caught out and Ryu got caught and then we both died. So, if we were able to hold, we were pretty comfortable playing for late game.

What do you think of the Sightstone changes? That’s something influencing your lane directly.

Since they don’t have to spend 800 gold to buy Sightstone, that gold is always going to be used to buy items that help the team. I know some weird matchups where if they go for Frostfang and they don’t get any poke down, they can’t upgrade it, so that’s really weird. There are games where, if you’re losing lane, you can’t poke them, you can’t upgrade your item, so you won’t get Sightstone until like 15 minutes, then it becomes really bad.

We are still trying to figure everything out and it’s going to take a while.

Do you think this meta fits you and your team better in comparison to the last meta?

For me, I always want to play the carry role in the team, like the past meta, with Ardent Censer. I like it because I can do more, but I’m totally fine with how the meta is shaping. I just REALLY don’t want to go back to Ashe, Varus, Jhin and supports one-shotting you every game (laughs). That was just a nightmare. As long as we don’t go back to that, I’m fine with anything else.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

Even though our team has a good standing right now, I just want everyone to know that we are a pretty new team and we still have lots of room to grow, and especially for myself and Aphro, our bot lane is still really new. I think right now, for Aphro and I, we understand what we’re doing is working right now and we’re not doing too much to change that, but I think if we really get down and try to help each other improve, we’re going to become a much stronger bot lane than we currently are. Other teams have to watch out for that.

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Izento is a journalist present at the NA LCS, armchair analyst and car enthusiast. As an avid Season 1 League of Legends player, he's since pursued his passion for esports through the power of writing.